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Now if happiness did indeed require freedom from pain,
sickness, misfortune, disaster, it would be utterly denied to
anyone confronted by such trials: but if it lies in the fruition
of the Authentic Good, why turn away from this Term and look to
means, imagining that to be happy a man must need a variety of
things none of which enter into happiness? If, in fact, felicity
were made up by heaping together all that is at once desirable
and necessary we must bid for these also. But if the Term must be
one and not many; if in other words our quest is of a Term and
not of Terms; that only can be elected which is ultimate and
noblest, that which calls to the tenderest longings of the soul.
The quest and will of the Soul are not pointed directly towards
freedom from this sphere: the reason which disciplines away our
concern about this life has no fundamental quarrel with things of
this order; it merely resents their interference; sometimes,
even, it must seek them; essentially all the aspiration is not so
much away from evil as towards the Soul's own highest and
noblest: this attained, all is won and there is rest- and this is
the veritably willed state of life.
There can be no such thing as "willing" the acquirement of
necessaries, if Will is to be taken in its strict sense, and not
misapplied to the mere recognition of need.
It is certain that we shrink from the unpleasant, and such
shrinking is assuredly not what we should have willed; to have no
occasion for any such shrinking would be much nearer to our
taste; but the things we seek tell the story as soon as they are
ours. For instance, health and freedom from pain; which of these
has any great charm? As long as we possess them, we set no store
upon them.
Anything which, present, has no charm and adds nothing to
happiness, which when lacking is desired because of the presence
of an annoying opposite, may reasonably be called a necessity but
not a Good.
Such things can never make part of our final object: our Term
must be such that though these pleasanter conditions be absent
and their contraries present, it shall remain, still, intact.
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